14th October 2026
Reading Time: 9 Minutes
Number One – Prepare to go when you arrive
One day when we were anchored on Milneland I was woken at 03:00 by the lapping of waves on the shore. The wind had got up. I looked out of the window and saw a wall of icebergs heading swiftly our way. I woke up Paul and said we need to go NOW!
Normally before I set off I go through a procedure which I suppose most Sailors do. I check the oil, coolant, gearbox fluid, belt tension, water strainer and top up with fuel. I throw a torch beam over the engine to check for fuel or oil leaks. I do a passage plan and check the charts etc etc.
There are two good reasons why these preparation checks might be best done shortly after arrival, rather than just prior to departure.
Firstly – If you need to leave in a hurry, it is reassuring to know that everything is in order
Secondly – If you do find a fuel leak, slack alternator belt or are missing a chart, it will give you some more relaxed time to sort it out
Number Two – It was a joy not to have Starlink
It would be very helpful to receive Grib files and Ice Charts at sea. I have achieved it in the past over my Sat Phone linked to a very old Toshiba Laptop running Windows XP. This time we tried to download information onto a better laptop running on Linux. We achieved it – once. Then I gave up. It was too stressful getting different totally incoherent and incomprehensible messages.
Almost all the other yachts had Starlink. All of them raved about it. It was far cheaper than paying for my Sat Phone airtime fees and a thousand times more effective. They could browse Windy and the Danish Ice Charts when ever they wanted. I was rather jealous of their access to up to date weather routing information. But they could also doom scroll.
We went semi-blind. We could always try to phone a friend on the brick sat phone and ask them to check the weather and ice charts, but that is not quite the same, and it costs a fortune.
On arrival in Ittoqqortoormiit I could use my mobile phone to get some data but as we made our way up Scoresby Sund the signal faded out and we were completely isolated from the world. No doom scrolling. We could sit in the cockpit and stare at the splendour of our surroundings. We could read books. We could even read books to each other…..
Soon we began to enjoy our digital detox and were glad that we couldn’t hear the news or search Google to find out what “AMOC*” means.
I think it did us a lot of good.
Apart from that, Starlink is illegal in Greenland. Tusass, the state-owned telecommunications company, has a legal monopoly on telecommunications services in Greenland. Not that anyone seemed to care.
*Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation
Number Three – Never take any gear unless it has been tested for at least a year
I have always wanted to take a drone so that I could fly it high above the boat and see a way through any ice. Landing a drone on a tiny boat covered in rigging was not going to be easy. With my limited skills it would be nearly impossible.
Then I spotted a rather expensive waterproof drone – the Hoverair Aqua. Perfect, land it next to the boat and pick it up with a fishing net. Problem solved?
The drone was designed to be used with the supplied waterproof armband. It would follow you, or fly by your side, or rise up and circle you. But that was not what I needed.
I wanted it to fly it up way above the boat and look forwards – away from me. So we needed to purchase another control unit. It needed to pair with my phone. Then it got complicated. Every time I received a different message. I did manage to fly it once or twice in Iceland but never managed to set it up in Greenland. There were no printed instructions. You need to go online to search for answers but we had no internet. I found the whole thing just made me annoyed and gave up. If I had bought it a year earlier, I could maybe have got it to work, but it was a new model and only released just before I set sail.
My old wooden “drone”, which simply gets hauled to the spreaders and then sends the image by Bluetooth to an iPad worked fine!
Number Four – Chums (Angels, Kellets) have one big advantage over snubbers
If the wind pipes up during the night and you are being blown towards the shore it is normally a good idea to let out some more chain. However, if you have a snubber hooked or tied onto your chain, you will need to try to haul in the chain enough to undo the snubber thus shortening the chain’s scope just when you don’t want to.
You may also need to wake up the crew to give you a hand if the wind is too strong to haul in the chain single-handed.
With the good old fashioned (and much maligned) chum with a proper chain shackle, you can simply let out more chain and it will run through the saddle of the shackle. Easy peasy.
Number Five – 7 Minute Exercise App
Staying fit on a boat is quite tricky. If you are anchored in a remote place then running isn’t a realistic option as the terrain is more suited to scrambling or crawling.
I must confess, normally when I arrive in a port the first thing on my mind is a celebration beer. But that aside.
There is a simple app on my phone called “Seven Minutes Every Day”. The exercises would be too tricky while you are sailing, but once you get ashore it is a fun and fast way to improve cardiovascular function and muscle strength.
Number Six – Take an Exercise Band
Talking of exercise, taking an exercise band is a good idea too. Apart from their obvious use for exercise, you never know when a good piece of strong bungee can solve a problem. I use mine stretched across the coach roof winches so I can attach two special covers that I made.
Number Seven – Make some Folding Pads
While you are down at Decathlon buying your exercise band why not pick up a cheap yoga foam mat too.
The two things my Crew moan about most are having cold feet and a sore bum. These cushions when unfolded are designed to form a cosy insulated floor in the cabin. When folded they can be used as cockpit cushions. They are also useful as kneeling pads for working on the engine and for exercise mats if you decide to take up option Number 5. On Sumara they were used every day and I wondered how it took me 36 years to decide to make them!
Number Eight – Stick with AGM Batteries
I don’t have any solar panels on Sumara and I charge my batteries with a small Aerogen wind generator. In 36 years I have only once charged my batteries using shore power.
However, after a few days of downwind sailing the general service battery gets rather low. I could solve that problem by going over to lithium batteries which would double the amp hours using the same space. I decided against swapping mainly because installing a lithium system is very complex and I didn’t want anything new just prior to this voyage.
I also learnt that apparently Battery Management Systems just shut off everything if there is a fault and it can be very tricky to restore any power. That would leave the boat with no navigation lights, masthead VHF or GPS. Not really ideal.
The lithium guidance notes from the CA say “Users should not attempt to fight a domestic lithium installation battery fire even if there are lithium capable handheld extinguishers on board. Personal safety and evacuation must remain a priority if a fire or a thermal event is suspected” Evacuating in the Denmark Straight did not appeal.
I don’t have gas or petrol on board mainly to reduce the risk of fire or explosion.
I bought a new 125 amp hour AGM battery. I sleep better without lithium batteries on board
Number Nine – My new forepeak packing net works really well
For years I had a piece of bungee stretched across the forepeak to hold all the gear in place but in a rough sea inevitably something would work its way through the gaps, with a reasonable added chance of falling into the Baby Blake.
This year I made a reinforced net with two ropes going to pullies mounted on the “back” of the deck beam. The space over the chain bin holds the genoa, two survival suits, a dry suit, a sea anchor, a large inflatable fender and more things that I can’t think of right now. They all need to come out every time we anchor, and then go back in again afterwards to get the gear out of the way. This new net system is super fast and very effective. The netting material allows air to circulate and is very strong. The ropes fasten with two cam cleats.
Picture shows the net down with the chain ready to deploy
Number 10 – Don’t use Dyneema unless you need it!
I know a lot of Sailors, myself included, carry a length of Dyneema in their ditty bags as a go-to cord for many repair jobs such as replacing a broken rigging screw with a lashing etc.
A nasty incident off the north coast of the Faroe Islands made me think about the wisdom of using materials which are stronger than required. We gybed the mainsail but the top of the sail got jammed on the end of the upper spreader. There was a small loop of cord sticking out of the leach. The cord is used to extract the Velcro flaps that secure the battens in place. I normally leave them out ready to pull the flaps out at the end of the season. With one reef in the main, the loop lined up perfectly with the spreader and got totally jammed in the wire slots. It could easily have snapped the spreader and put us it considerable danger. However, luckily the loop did eventually snap. We were grateful the loop was just made of nylon. Had it been Dyneema it could have eventually broken off the spreader or at the very least involved a tricky climb up the mast in rough sea conditions to attempt to free it.
It made me think: a) Tuck in those loops. b) Don’t use super strength materials unless they are necessary. Do you really need a Dyneema chin strap on your hat?
I am sure there were more lessons learnt but ten is enough for now!
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